Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Noumenon Infinity by Marina J. Lostetter Noumenon Infinity by Marina J. Lostetter. [Warning: if you have not read Noumenon, which this novel is a sequel to, there will be spoilers here] At the end of Marina J. Lostetter’s brilliant debut novel Noumenon, Convoy Seven returned to an earth several millennia removed from the society and culture that launched its original mission to investigate the seemingly unnatural behavior of the variable star designated LQ Pyx. To their dismay, the people of Earth have far different priorities and lack interest in exploring the stars. No longer under obligation to the descendants of their forebears, Convoy Seven set back out to discover who started the unfinished structure around LQ Pyx, and if possible, to complete it themselves. Noumenon was a spirited and ambitious work of golden-to-silver age sci-fi redux, re-purposing and combining popular science fictional elements like the Generation Ship (Orphans of the Sky, The Enemy Stars), the psychological effects of time dilation (The Forever War, Tau Zero), and the Big Dumb Object (Rendezvous with Rama, Ringworld). It was also a perfect balance of hard sci-fi’s emphasis on scientific detail and heroic problem solving, and social sci-fi’s speculations about human behavior. While Noumenon left us in the dark regarding the convoy’s discovery of the mega-structure at LQ Pyx, the promise of convoy seven’s return trip made the prospect of a sequel enticing. Fully aware of the state of anticipation she left us in, Lostetter wisely opts for delayed gratification. Noumenon Infinity doesn’t kick off with convoy seven’s journey back to LQ Pyx, instead taking us back in time to the early years of the Planet United Consortium to follow the story of Convoy Twelve. Convoy Twelve vanished while experimenting with sub-dimensional travel, assumed lost or destroyed. In fact, the experiment jettisoned them to a place and time so far away from the 22nd century Earth they departed it’s a wonder they don’t lose all hope. An alien craft discovers and intercepts them. Faced with the aliens’ superior technology and relentless pursuit, they have no choice but to make first contact. The aliens are terrifying and powerful, but seem well meaning, if also somewhat aloof. And they know something about the convoy they’re not willing to share. From there the novel’s chapters alternate between the narratives of convoys twelve and seven. While the linear progress of convoy twelve’s plight remains immediate, the trajectory of convoy seven’s narrative follows the pattern established in Noumenon. Convoy Seven’s story takes huge leaps forward in time, each chapter picking up the story generations removed from the previous chapter. Differing interpretations of seven’s mission leads to a schism among the convoy, between those who want to follow the map retrieved from the Nest—which they believe will lead them to the builders of the LQ Pyx mega-structure—and those who believe their sole purpose is to return to LQ Pyx and complete the original goal of their mission. After some conflict and deliberation, the convoy separates into two groups, hoping the splinter group of map followers will one day, many generations down the line, rejoin their sister ships at LQ Pyx. To reveal much more of what happens in Noumenon Infinity would be a betrayal. Lostetter’s ability to innovate and astonish appears inexhaustible, and I hate ruining surprises. The above plot descriptions, busy as they might seem, are a woefully inadequate representation of what happens in the novel, which outpaces Noumenon in scope and scale by several degrees. One of the common, and most cynical, tropes of generation ship stories is how the passage of time obscures the origins of its society, often to the point of delusion and ignorance. Taken together, Noumenon and Noumenon Infinity acknowledge how the practical concerns that give birth to social groups can become mythologized over time, but that those societies develop, organize, and evolve according to their necessities, which can change frequently. Myths of origin, however idealistic or arcane they may seem, are just as likely to have material value to an ever-changing culture, to be a unifying and energizing presence and not always reducible to fundamentalist zeal. Noumenon was my favorite science fiction novel of 2017 and the encore is even more thrilling and satisfying. Noumenon Infinity weaves in and out of the lives of these disparate human civilizations, discovering the shocking but strangely understandable ways in which they emerge from strife and conflict and imperative to adjust to their conditions in ingenious ways; it’s a relentlessly exciting, wondrous, unnerving, and ultimately sublime work of science fiction. Noumenon Infinity by Marina J. Lostetter. From and To can't be the same language. That page is already in . Something went wrong. Check the webpage URL and try again. Sorry, that page did not respond in a timely manner. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Something went wrong, please try again. Try using the Translator for the Microsoft Edge extension instead. Noumenon Infinity by Marina J. Lostetter. From and To can't be the same language. That page is already in . Something went wrong. Check the webpage URL and try again. Sorry, that page did not respond in a timely manner. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Something went wrong, please try again. Try using the Translator for the Microsoft Edge extension instead. ISBN 13: 9780062497864. Travel to the remotest reaches of deep space in this wondrous follow-up to the acclaimed Noumenon —a tale of exploration, adventure, science, and humanity with the sweep and intelligence of the works of Arthur C. Clarke, Neal Stephenson, and Octavia Butler. Generations ago, Convoy Seven and I.C.C. left Earth on a mission that would take them far beyond the solar system. Launched by the Planet United Consortium, a global group formed to pursue cooperative Earth-wide interests in deep space, nine ships headed into the unknown to explore a distant star called LQ Pyx. Eons later, the convoy has returned to LQ Pyx to begin work on the Web, the alien megastructure that covers the star. Is it a Dyson Sphere, designed to power a civilization as everyone believes—or something far more sinister? Meanwhile, Planet United’s littlest convoy, long thought to be lost, reemerges in a different sector of deep space. What they discover holds the answers to unlocking the Web’s greater purpose. Each convoy possesses a piece of the Web’s puzzle . . . but they may not be able to bring those pieces together and uncover the structure’s true nature before it’s too late. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. Generations ago, Convoy Seven and the AI known as I.C.C. left Earth on a mission that would take them far beyond our solar system. The Planet United Consortium, a global group formed to pursue cooperative Earth-wide interests in deep space, launched these nine ships into the unknown to explore a distant star called LQ Pyx. Eons later, the convoy has returned to LQ Pyx to begin work on the Web, the alien megastructure that covers the star. Is it a Dyson Sphere, designed to power a civilization as everyone believes—or something far more sinister? Meanwhile, Planet United’s smallest convoy, long thought to be lost, reemerges in a different sector of deep space. What they discover holds the answers to unlocking the Web’s greater purpose. Each convoy possesses a piece of the Web’s puzzle . . . but they may not be able to bring those pieces together and uncover the structure’s true nature before it’s too late. About the Author : Marina J. Lostetter’s original short fiction has appeared in Lightspeed’s Women Destroy Science Fiction! and InterGalactic Medicine Show , among other publications. Originally from Oregon, the former winner of the Writers of the Future Award now lives in Arkansas with her husband, Alex, and enjoys globe-trotting, board games, and all things art-related. Noumenon Infinity. Travel to the remotest reaches of deep space in this wondrous follow-up to the acclaimed Noumenon—a tale of exploration, adventure, science, and humanity with the sweep and intelligence of the works of Arthur C. Clarke, Neal Stephenson, and Octavia Butler. Generations ago, Convoy Seven and I.C.C. left Earth on a mission that would take them far beyond the solar system. Launched by the Planet United Consortium, a global group formed to pursue cooperative Earth-wide interests in deep space, nine ships headed into the unknown to explore a distant star called LQ Pyx. Eons later, the convoy has returned to LQ Pyx to begin work on the Web, the alien megastructure that covers the star. Is it a Dyson Sphere, designed to power a civilization as everyone believes—or something far more sinister? Meanwhile, Planet United’s littlest convoy, long thought to be lost, reemerges in a different sector of deep space. What they discover holds the answers to unlocking the Web’s greater purpose. Each convoy possesses a piece of the Web’s puzzle . . . but they may not be able to bring those pieces together and uncover the structure’s true nature before it’s too late. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JUN 18, 2018. The ambitious and effective sequel to Noumenon shifts gears from generation ship saga to space opera and follows two main threads. In the first, scientist Vanhi Kapoor heads a mission to research and test new forms of interdimensional star travel in near-Earth space until her convoy suffers a strange accident, which leaves Vanhi herself unusually unmoored from the laws of physics. In the second, in the far future, the crew of Convoy Seven, who spent the previous book investigating a strange characteristic of a distant star that turned out to be an incomplete alien megastructure, return to try to complete the megastructure and make it operational. Both threads wind up spanning thousands of years, generations of people, and experiences outside human understanding; they then connect to each other in a virtuoso piece of plotting that satisfies as a denouement while setting up entirely new mysteries. The massive scope of the ideas, and the more than geological amounts of time involved, mean that the human element is somewhat secondary to the full sweep of the saga, but this doesn't read as a weakness so much as a necessity. Lostetter remains at the forefront of innovation in hard science fiction. Customer Reviews. A wonderful journey. I no longer read often. I find many back covers uninspiring. I don’t want to read the same story with different characters over and over and over. The Noumenon books weave a wonderfully original story. A. L. Author of “The Descendants.” Excellent Epic SF. In the same way I love android and robot stories because they point at what it is to be human, I love the Noumenon series for showing the different facets of humanity. This book takes a wider approach and expands out from one convoy to show another's journey. We still get to follow convoy seven and their quest to understand the alien megastructure, but we also find out what happened to convoy twelve. Convoy twelve was briefly mentioned a few times in Noumenon as having "disappeared" during some kind of experiment gone wrong. Except: surprise! They are alive and we get to find out where and when they go. Lostetter does a great job of making readers care about the fate of several characters at once and even though a section would end, I was excited to see what happened to the other convoy (sections flip back and forth between convoy seven and twelve throughout the book). Both convoys have an AI, C (an earlier version of ICC) and ICC--which works as one of the many "glues" that connect the two narratives. There were a lot of thematic touches that I adored. For one, the concept of survival and evolution to ensure survival were repeated and by the end of the book some of those points were incredibly emotional and revealing for me as a reader. Noumenon Infinity opens ideas and "what ifs" that are presented as possibilities and the characters must decide how to react to those evolutions. I was shocked and horrified, but also--what makes something "unhuman" or "a threat to our way of life" is dependent on context. The sacrifice of some traits/traditions may be necessary for the greater good, depending on the goals of that society. Anyway, those are just deeper philosophical threads, for the most part this book concentrates on the journey of several characters and added new favorites to my list for the series. I'm desperate to find out what happens to Vanhi on convoy twelve for example, and what both convoys will do now because of events that happen by the end. I wish I could say but this is a book that shouldn't be spoiled! NOUMENON INFINITY. The newly relaunched Convoy Seven and its crew of clones heads back to the distant star LQ Pyx and the mysterious alien structure surrounding it in this breathtaking sequel to Lostetter's critically acclaimed Noumenon (2017). Generations and generations have passed since the Planet United Consortium sent Convoy Seven to investigate the strange strobing around the star LQ Pyx. We return to find the relaunched convoy heading back to the star to complete construction on "the Web," which is presumed to be a massive structure capable of harvesting massive amounts of energy. But while much of the convoy is dedicated to this task, a smaller but equally passionate group wants to focus on studying the Nataré, the alien species believed to be the original builders of the Web. While the idea of splitting up is totally heretical to convoy members who value unity above everything, it's possible that the consequences of abandoning the Nataré study would be much worse than they can foresee. Meanwhile, the narrative flips all the way back to the Planet United Consortium's beginning and follows the fate of a different convoy, this one meant to stay close and continue investigating methods of interstellar travel. This convoy isn't supposed to travel far from Earth, but an accident during an experiment sends them further from home than anyone had imagined possible. A novel that was anything less than stellar would be an especially disappointing follow-up to the brilliant Noumenon , but Lostetter has achieved that and much more. Part a study of the nature of love and cultural evolution, the novel also delves into spirituality and the function of religion in a scientifically advanced culture. Somehow these richly developed themes never get in the way of the enthralling deep space travel and wondrous alien discoveries fans of Noumenon will be expecting. Sci-fi action and adventure held together by universally human themes; this is the genre at its very best. Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2018. ISBN: 978-0-06-249786-4. Page Count: 496. Publisher: Harper Voyager. Review Posted Online: May 15, 2018. Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018. Share your opinion of this book. Did you like this book? More by Marina J. Lostetter. A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. New York Times Bestseller. DEVOLUTION. by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020. Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006). A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene. A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.